We’ve told you about The Atlantic’s By Heart series a few times before. Now, here’s a compendium of some of the series’ best advice on writing collected from the past year.
Writing By Heart
Celebrity Memoir Overdose
John Harris at Guardian looks at what reading 11 celebrity memoirs in four days will do to your brain.
●
●
In a Fugue State
“Could I write a novel about fugues in the form of a fugue?” Margot Singer wonders in The Paris Review, remembering the process of writing her first novel and considering other authors – Joyce, Nabokov, Woolf – who have tried to compose words musically. See also: our own Jacob Lambert on whether to write with background music on.
Irish Drinking Songs for Cat Lovers
Do you love cats? Do you love Irish drinking songs? Do you love them together? Apparently, you are not alone. Marc Gunn of the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast has two parody albums devoted to this improbable marriage. Speaking for myself (in the words of the immortal Joe Turner), “I’m like a one-eyed cat, peeping in a seafood store…”
●
●
The Likeness Man
“If you’re doing an assignment for some Luddite professor who insists on originality – and probably uses typewriter ribbon – keep in mind that I only offer phrases from hard-to-trace sources. Just today I was slipped some primo stuff from an English teacher in Simonton, Iowa who’s been advising the high school literary magazine for decades. This woman, her voice is as smooth as creamed corn.” Confessions of a metaphor merchant.
●
●